Berlin in New York

New York ist ein Berliner

New York's Carnegie Hall is importing highlights of Berlin's culture

NEW YORK is in the middle of a culture fest celebrating Berlin, a 17-day marathon of music, film, architecture, literature and photography that began on November 2nd. “Berlin In Lights” is largely the brainchild of Sir Clive Gillinson, a former managing director of the London Symphony Orchestra who became executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall in July 2005. Determined to make the New York concert hall more international, he is initiating a series of cultural festivals celebrating cities, nations or artistic movements. Berlin is the first of these.

A visit by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, under its principal conductor Sir Simon Rattle (another Briton) had been planned for some time. Much taken by the extraordinary transformation of Berlin since reunification—the city thrives through culture and politics; there is hardly any business or finance—Sir Clive decided to expand that visit into a full-blown festival. He got an enthusiastic response from other New York institutions.

Berlin and New York have sizeable mutual admiration societies but, until recently, post-war Berlin could only dream of being in the same league of creative effervescence as New York. Now, in partnership with the American Academy in Berlin, Carnegie Hall has put together a crowd of seminars—on literature, the visual arts, film-making—inviting stars such as Volker Schlöndorff and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, both Oscar-winning German directors. The Goethe-Institut and the German consulate-general are showing photographs, the Museum of Modern Art is screening films about Berlin and the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre is screening the 13 episodes and epilogue of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's television epic “Berlin Alexanderplatz” in 14 separate rooms.

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, extending its visit to eight days, will be performing Gustav Mahler's last three major works as well as music by Thomas Adès, Magnus Lindberg and György Kurtag, three contemporary composers. In addition, various chamber ensembles made up of Philharmonic musicians are playing both at Carnegie and at “neighbourhood concerts” in the city's five boroughs. The most innovative of the Philharmonic's offerings will be the performances on November 17th and 18th at the United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights of Igor Stravinsky's “The Rite of Spring”, danced by kids from state schools who have been trained for just eight weeks. To those who think that the result will be shambolic, the organisers retort that the experiment worked well with children—including refugees—from state schools in Berlin.

“Berlin In Lights” is not comprehensive: there is no theatre and little dance. A festival that gets too big loses its charm, says Sir Clive: “We would like to capture people's imagination and incite them to explore new horizons.”

The audience at some of the shows—a performance by Max Raabe and the Palast Orchestra of songs from the 1920s and 1930s, Ute Lemper, a German chanteuse specialising in Kurt Weill, in cabaret—were made up largely from what one participant described as the geriatric intelligentsia from the Upper West Side. As many of them have German- or Austrian-Jewish origins, they have a loving, knowledgeable relationship with German culture. One critic hissed that Ms Lemper was a poor copy of Lotte Lenya, Weill's wife, whom she had seen perform in the 1940s. Sir Clive hopes that concerts by the Nomad SoundSystem, a Berlin band performing western dance music and North African melodies, and concerts by Berlin's Turkish and Kurdish communities may bring in a younger crowd.

Carnegie Hall does not reveal the themes of its next festival, but Sir Clive is planning to organise at least two a year. He has already received a letter from the French consul-general and an inquiry from the Italian representative in New York about staging a fest for their cultures. But a city or a country is only one of many options for festivals of the future. “We want to do ideas,” says Sir Clive.